Push Comes To Shove
by Aoife-hime
Summary: [Tatsuki, Ichigo] Tatsuki is sick and tired of being weak, so she takes matters into her own hands.  Picks up from middle of Chapter 239 of the manga.
1. Part I

A/N: It was really only a matter of time before I wrote a Bleach fic, and here is the result. This story is really an ode to Tatsuki, as she is my favorite (and sadly, quite neglected) character of the series. It starts as a continuation of the events in the middle of Chapter 239 of the manga, just so you're all warned; this means spoilers up to that point.

Push Comes to Shove

**Part I**

She remembers the sky opening then closing again like the great maw of some ancient god long forgotten by the world, remembers it vividly; it's not the sort of sight that would be soon lost in the annals of memory. She can perfectly recall the feel of the strong wooden rungs of the never-ending ladder under her palms, the quiet crunch of baked earth under her school shoes, and the foreign scent of energy flickering through the air leaving a sharp tang in her nose and the back of her throat. She remembers all of these details, down to the exact expression of Keigo's exaggerated features upon first looking through the trap door to the basement and which type of gum Mizuru had been chewing nervously during the hurried trip between school and the mystery shop.

But what Tatsuki remembers most clearly is the tangled mess of emotions vying for dominance. There's anger: a clean, sharp burn somewhere behind her heart. The sadness is tinged with helplessness and together they succeed in making her stomach queasy and her limbs numb. And there's love, too blatant to ignore, and all the pesky feelings that come attached to it. She never realized it before that morning, just how deeply she loves her friends and how much their well-being means to her.

The thing is, Arisawa Tatsuki has never been known for dealing well with _feelings_. Feelings are something for girls – real girls, not Tatsuki-girls.

"Arisawa! Arisawa! Stop!" yells her sparring partner. But she can't stop, not just yet because there's an annoying ball of _something_ that's been burning in her chest for the last week and it won't let her stop until she's eased the ache. She growls as she strikes out once more, this time sending her partner to the ground. Guilt creeps in at the edges of her mind, but she looks away from his contorted expression before it gets overwhelming.

She's already unwinding the tape from her hands when the coach comes over and asks her if maybe it would be better if she takes a few days off. Tatsuki nods but isn't able to meet his eye; if she did, she's afraid something very un-Tatsuki like would happen. There might even be tears. She rushes to change and hurries out before she has a chance to give into the uncharacteristic prickle in the corners of her eyes.

On the way home she takes a familiar detour, walking the streets to Inoue Orihime's apartment without even realizing that is where she is heading until she's at the foot of the stairs leading up to the door. It's the first time she's been there since her friend vanished. There is no friendly light in the window when she arrives, no happy conversation trickling through the crack under the door from the recent houseguests, and even though she knows this is to be expected, it still pains her. The place is dead – a home that has become merely a house in under a week. Tatsuki traces the name on the plate next to the door twice over, praying for possibly the thousandth time that her friend is still alive and well in that place behind the sky.

Maybe it's because it hasn't happened to her for years, but Tatsuki doesn't realize that the reason her face feels warm is because there are tears streaming down it until they've stopped and her eyes are red, sore, and tired.

She returns home surprisingly exhausted but can't go to sleep. The visit has made her face the reality that her friends are gone, hopefully not for good; in school, it had been easy to simply say they were home sick but now that she's seen it, seen the empty house, she can't deny it. Her closest friends in the world have gone to fight and she has been left behind. Again.

* * *

Tatsuki knows why Ichigo acted like such a cold-hearted bastard: it's in his nature to protect. She knows he had her well-being in mind, as well as Keigo's and Mizuru's, when he tried to brush off their worries with indifferent, harsh responses but, she realizes as she watches the moon set from her spot on her cold bedroom floor, that still doesn't stop her from feeling pissed off. There's more to the feeling than that, though. She's not just angry with Ichigo. More than that, she's angry with herself: angry for not being strong enough to protect Orihime, angry for nearly getting killed on a number of occasions, angry for having to depend so entirely on others because she is too weak to even save herself. 

'Weak' is not a word Tatsuki has ever used to describe herself, but now she feels it suits her perfectly. And she hates that. Hates it so much she can't stop her fist from slamming loudly down against the floor of her room. When she hears footsteps shuffling down the hall, she clambers into bed a moment before her father appears at her door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Is everything alright?" he manages through a yawn. Tatsuki glances over at her clock to see it's now nearly four in the morning.

For a moment, she considers spilling everything. But a beat passes, long and silent, and with it goes the urge to talk. "Yes, everything is fine," she lies.

She knows he doesn't believe her, but he leaves anyways. He trusts his daughter, even if he's never said so aloud; she has always been independent and has dealt with her own problems her own way, for better or for worse.

For another few hours, Tatsuki continues to wrestle with the realization that she is weak. A solution doesn't come to her until just before dawn, and by this point her eyes are aching from her earlier bout of crying as well as from staying open far long. But the shot of adrenaline racing through her is enough to make her get out of bed and start pacing. Weak. She is weak now, but she doesn't have to always be so. Wasn't Ichigo the one who would always cry when he lost a fight? And now he is going off to supernatural lands carrying a sword that's taller than she is to fight monsters without batting an eye. Orihime as well. The picked-on little girl of middle school days has been replaced by a strong woman willing and able to fight for the safety of her friends.

Her friends aren't weak anymore. Tatsuki decides it's time she stopped being weak as well.

With that thought in mind, she finally falls asleep. It's only an hour later that her mother opens her door, wondering why Tatsuki is sleeping through her blaring alarm clock. She doesn't wake her daughter up when she sees her, though, just walks over and switches the alarm off so she can rest longer. She'll call the school and tell them that Tatsuki is ill, she decides, shutting the door softly behind her.

Because this is the most peaceful her daughter has looked in a long while.

* * *

Her mother smiles at her quietly when Tatsuki eventually wanders into the kitchen for breakfast, though at this point it's more like a late lunch. There's food set out on the table – her favorite meal from when she was a child – and she smiles gratefully before she begins to devour it as fast as she can without making herself sick. It's funny: she didn't realize before she was quite so hungry. 

"You know you can talk to us, your father and me, if there's something that's bothering you," her mother says eventually. Tatsuki stops chewing, a noodle hanging unladylike from her slightly open mouth. Her mother's face is open, encouraging, and above all else worried. That sense of guilt she originally felt when she sent her sparring partner to the floor yesterday returns with a vengeance, but she swallows it along with her mouthful of food.

"I know. But this is something I have to do by myself," she answers seriously. And it's true, at least for her. As much as it pains her to see her parents worried about her like this, she knows she'll never be able to live with herself if she can't do this on her own.

Though she looks a little sad, her mother nods and smiles. "That's what I thought. Just know that we love you, Tatsuki."

"I love you both too."

Tatsuki goes out after that, grabbing her jacket and walking to… to somewhere. She doesn't know where exactly, only that it will be obvious when she gets there. Her feet carry her across town, past her school which she uncomfortably skirts, past the dojo, past the spot by the river she remembers watching Ichigo pace all those years ago, up to the woods by the cemetery. There she stops. It's quiet, as befits the area around a place like a cemetery, and since it's the middle of the day people are still in school or at work so none of the nearby graves and shrines have any visitors. A cool breeze rustles through the trees, tinged with the last undercurrents of summer heat.

This is the place.

A few moments pass before Tatsuki realizes something: now that she's here, she has no idea what she's supposed to do. At all. It had all seemed so straightforward in those moments before she succumbed to the overwhelming pull of sleep last night: everything would surely just fall in place if she could get started. But now that she's here, it's quite obvious she has no clue how to start in the first place.

Tatsuki runs her hands through her short hair a couple times, making the ends stand out straight and spiky, an unconscious imitation of Ichigo's normal hair style. She's pretty sure there isn't a book for this sort of thing, which is good because Tatsuki has never been much for book learning. And if there's no book, then Ichigo, Orihime, and the others must have learned some other way, learned how to not be weak anymore. A teacher, possibly – some sort of mentor. Her mind jumps back to the little shop with the basement cavern and the strange blonde man with the hat and wooden sandals. But somehow, Tatsuki can't bring herself to ask for help just yet. She's always been stubborn like that.

For a time, she sits there, back to one of the trees, puzzling over how to start. As the minutes wear on, each as unproductive as the last, her eyes start to droop and her gaze goes unfocused. She's not tired enough to sleep, but she stays in that halfway state until she feels it.

It's soft at first, a gentle stirring somewhere in the pit of her stomach, warm and pleasant yet fragile like the first breeze of spring. But as she continues to sit, it stirs a bit stronger, a bit more intensely. With a start, she snaps back to attention. She's certain: this is her strength she's feeling. It's small now, barely there, but she knows what it is. It's the same feeling that stirs when she's close to her friends, especially to Ichigo. She has ignored it before, not knowing what it was until this moment.

Determined, Tatsuki settles back against the tree and closes her eyes. If anyone had passed by her then, they might have thought she was dozing; her eyes are almost closed and her breathing is slow and deep. But there is a light sheen of sweat on her forehead and her brows are knit slightly, giving away her intense concentration. What she's doing is like no meditation she's ever heard about, though that is the only thing Tatsuki is able to liken the process to. She spends the rest of the afternoon attempting to find that warm energy again, and possibly draw it out a little.

By the time the shadows are getting long and the street lamps are switching on, all Tatsuki has to show for her efforts are some very stiff muscles, a headache, and an incredibly empty stomach. She drags herself home as fast as she can and before she even speaks two words to her parents begins to shovel down her dinner as if she hasn't seen food for the past decade.

Her parents watch as she eats, eyes a little wider than usual. "Where did you go this afternoon?" her mother asks once Tatsuki's plate is empty.

"The woods by the cemetery," she responds succinctly and gets up to search through the refrigerator for more to eat; her stomach still seems painfully empty. If her parents are shocked by her answer, they don't show it. "What happened to the leftovers from yesterday?"

Her mom moves over to pull out the container from behind a large box of juice. Tatsuki doesn't even bother to sit down before she starts digging into the dinner she abstained from yesterday. "You seem better," her mother comments, an almost-amused look spreading across her face as she watches her daughter stuff her face.

Tatsuki swallows and grins. "Yeah, yeah I am."

* * *

The following days are particularly grueling. The only time Tatsuki can find for her personal training sessions is in the early morning before school, but this inevitably leaves her exhausted for the rest of the day. But she doesn't give up, not even when she starts falling asleep in class because there's just no way she can keep her eyes open one second longer and the teacher starts developing an annoying habit of smacking her desk right next to her head as a wake up call or when she takes a few punches at practice that she normally can block with ease. Because this isn't just about some sort of meditation training, even though that seems to be all she's able to do at the moment. This is something that she not only _won't_ give up on, but also _can't_ give up on. 

Her mother comments after two weeks that the grocery bills are getting rather high. Tatsuki has an explanation on the tip of her tongue, but the table top is far too comfortable a head rest for her to be bothered to answer.

The gentle stirring of energy in her stomach from before has transformed in this time, or maybe it's that Tatsuki is more in tune with what little was there in the first place. She's not sure, but by now it doesn't take nearly so long to reach out and touch that power, and when she does it spreads like warm oil across her skin, sinking into every part of her being and filling her with a sense of lightness that makes her worry that she might float away if a strong enough breeze were to come along.

She next begins to focus that energy, much like she would do for a kick or a punch. She pictures a white pinprick of light against a black nothingness in her mind's eye and tries to mould her energy into that shape. It's frustrating though; for a while, it feels almost as if there is something physical in her way and her frustration is only compounded by her apparently insatiable appetite.

On the morning after the first surprise frost it happens. She's cold, her nose turning red and starting to run annoyingly because of the early morning chill, but she's still outside practicing, praying that this will be the day that things fall into place. She also has a math test later, which she can't help but panic over even though she has spent the last week preparing. So it comes as a surprise that, even though part of her mind is on her upcoming test while the other is cursing the fast-approaching winter, something finally happens.

Her accomplishment comes in the form of a glowing bluish-white ball of energy. It floats a little above her mitten, pulsing steadily as if it has its own heartbeat. Tatsuki's eyes fix on it. She'd be lying if she said she didn't feel a small bit of fear at this accomplishment; it's not exactly normal for humans to make balls of energy float above their hands, is it? However, the sense of achievement is almost overwhelming and she lets out a loud whoop of excitement that cuts through the crisp morning air and sends what birds are left for the season flying off to quieter trees.

After that, it's astounding how fast things seem to fall in place. Two days later when she takes a step forward, she accidentally shoots ten feet in front of her, her muscles easily launching her across the ground. She stops abruptly and lands in a tangled heap on the ground, knocking all the air out of her lungs. The same thing almost happens the next day, but this time Tatsuki has a little more control and is able to stop herself almost gracefully after three steps. By the end of the week, she can "walk" faster than an Olympic sprinter can run, and can "run" at least ten times faster than she can walk.

But it's not just her ground speed that has been supernaturally augmented. Her punches strike the practice target faster than her eyes can follow; the only way she's certain she hits the target is because they keep breaking under the repeated batterings. The same goes for her kicks. She nearly takes out a tree with one of her wilder attempts; the old wood groans ominously but doesn't break, though the tree stays leaning at a sharper angle than is normally found in nature. After that, Tatsuki moves her exercises to a more open area of the woods.

A week after the incident with the tree, she has her first encounter with the strange man in black. He's dressed like Ichigo sometimes is, clad in a black hakama and kimono, though his sword is shorter and thinner than her friend's. His hair stands up in a great bushy heap on his head. Before this, Tatsuki would have just assumed he was some crazy with a strange fascination with time of samurais. Now, however, she can sense there's more, or rather _less_, to him than meets the eye. He's there, she can see that easily. But at the same time, he's not. He has a different feel to him than the people Tatsuki passed on the street on the way to the park, and some sort of pressure is pushing on her from his direction, albeit a weak one. The thought that he's a ghost floats to the front of her mind unbidden, but she tosses it aside immediately. Ghosts don't feel like this; she's seen ghosts before and they aren't nearly so complete. Some sort of spirit, then. Like those spirits that nearly killed her if it hadn't been for Orihime and Ichigo. Or maybe not like those spirits at all. Still…

Tatsuki shies away, grabbing her bag and running so fast through the trees she doesn't even notice when a bare twig slashes across her cheek, drawing blood. She doesn't stop running until she gets to the school gates. For the first time since she started her training, Tatsuki is early to class.

* * *

Lately, more often than not, Tatsuki is distracted during class. She no longer falls asleep, but her attention wanders so much that it almost makes no difference that her eyes are open instead of closed. Every day, she is faced with the conspicuously empty seats of Ichigo, Orihime, Sado, and Ishida. Her thoughts invariably stray back to them: what they're doing at the moment, whether they're hurt, what kinds of demons they're facing, whether they're winning, if they've already found Orihime or not. Sometimes she thinks of those monsters, and one time she hears one of them howling outside so loudly she's amazed the windows and walls don't vibrate. She excuses herself to the bathroom after that, feeling sick to her stomach with the unexpected wave of malicious energy. 

In the dojo, it's a different story. She's positive she's never been more focused in her life, and it's showing in her sparring matches. It's hard sometimes for her to stop from reaching down and bringing up the energy that makes all her kicks faster and her punches harder, and sometimes she does so without even thinking; the process has become so natural it's almost like breathing for her now. Her partners end up on the ground so fast that it takes them a few moments to realize they've been beaten. When her coach starts talking about how she could win the National tournament next year even if she were to break _both_ of her hands, Tatsuki grins sheepishly and makes a mental note to tone things down. While there are no rules about something like this, she's fairly sure that using this extra energy that can make glowing balls appear out of thin air and carry her ten feet in a single step would be considered cheating.

The praise feels nice, all the same.

One night, she wakes up with a start, her body shivering and covered in sweat. It registers in her mind that one of those monsters is close by even before she is fully awake, and she's half dressed before she realizes that it's nearly three in the morning and she should be a little quieter or she'll wake her parents up. Tatsuki finishes silently, not entirely sure what she plans to do, but determined to do something all the same. She rushes out of the house without a second thought, pausing just long enough to grab a hat to cover her sweat-dampened hair.

The beast is six blocks over in the middle of a park, prowling like a caged lion around the swings there. It's ugly, she can see that much even from a distance: long, thin head, bulging body, large dull claws, and a long whip-like tail. Moonlight gleams unnaturally off its face except for its eyes. They remain fathomless and black, two holes in a mask hiding a vast chasm of nothing. It howls when it catches sight of her and the sound makes her skin jump and crawl. She tries to swallow but finds her mouth suddenly devoid of moisture.

Tatsuki watches as the monster launches itself at her, as though it is part of a dream. She's frozen, her limbs not responding to the signals from her brain telling her to move, dammit! The thing is almost upon her when she finally does the first thing that comes to mind: she hits it.

The blow glances off its shoulder, but succeeds in stunning the creature for a few precious moments while Tatsuki regains her faculties. Then it howls again, obviously angry at her audacious move, and turns to face her. She's ready this time, though; her stance is loose but tense with energy and all her muscles feel warm, almost uncomfortably so, with the glow of that internal energy. It moves to strike again, but she meets its head half-way with a kick, knocking it off its feet and sending it rolling across the ground.

After that, the beast changes tactics, trying to approach Tatsuki from the side or even behind, but its movements are slow and ungainly compared to Tatsuki's and there's no way it can go anywhere without her following its every movement. She starts moving in on the offensive, pressing her advantage and darting in for a few moments of close-fighting before retreating, only to strike moments later from a different angle. In her exhilaration, she gets a little careless; a swipe that should have missed her catches her shoulder and tears through the fabric of her jacket and shirt leaving a dark, warm stain. Pain spreads down her arm, but it's so mitigated by the feeling of raw, warm power that she barely notices it.

It's tired now, but so is she; her breathing is becoming labored and it's becoming harder to control her movements. She overshoots her target a couple of times as she flies across the ground, nearly ending up with her face in a pole for her efforts. Her shoulder throbs, her chest aches, her legs feel like warm jelly, but she doesn't stop. She _can't_ stop. Not until this creature is gone. Then it stumbles slightly in its advance towards her, and Tatsuki spots her chance. Darting in, she launches herself and kicks, making sure her foot lands squarely between the creature's eyes. Upon impact, she hears a crack, deep and resonant, and then the beast is howling again. A few moments later, it's gone; there's no physical trace left to show that a monster like that was ever there, though the deep gouges in the ground from where its claws churned up the earth are evidence enough that some sort of battle took place.

Tatsuki bends over double, her breath ragged and catching in her throat. She's never felt quite so exhausted, nor has she ever felt nearly so accomplished. A few thick drops of blood fall from her shoulder, pooling on the ground at her feet. She'll have to get that looked at in the morning. It'll be hell explaining the injury to her parents; she won't be able to hide a gouge as big and as this one.

For now, though, Arisawa Tatsuki lets out a triumphant yell that echoes through the night sky. Weak, she most certainly is not.


	2. Interlude

Push Comes to Shove

**- Interlude -**

"Oh, it's you Tatsuki-san. What are you doing here this early?" Kurosaki Karin grumbles as she opens the door to the clinic. The sun has barely risen; the sky is a fiery mix of orange and red and the night's frost still clings to some of the shaded edges of nearby windows.

"I, uh, need to get this looked at," Tatsuki replies, almost nervously, pulling back her coat and the collar of her button down shirt. Somehow, she managed to hide the large gash from her mother this morning, but blood is starting to seep through the bandages she scrounged up when she arrived back home in the early hours of the morning and she's fairly certain she is going to need stitches. She could have easily gone to the hospital, but she knows the Kurosaki clinic better and knows that, despite his exceedingly eccentric ways, Kurosaki Isshin is bound to be far more understanding than any hospital doctor. With any luck, he won't press how she received the wound in the first place.

"Whoa!" exclaims Karin, her eyes suddenly wide and all remaining vestiges of sleep thrown off. "How'd you get that?" The younger girl ushers Tatsuki inside and guides her towards one of the rooms with exam tables inside.

Tatsuki scratches the back of her head with her good hand. "I was clumsy. Got caught on something."

Karin's eyes narrow at the excuse, not believing it for a second but thankfully not pressing the issue. The look of disbelief is suddenly replaced with another, more far-off look as if she is trying to remember something from long ago. "You seem… different," she finally says, and Tatsuki's stomach twists a little, uncomfortably. She's not sure why, but she doesn't want to tell anyone about what she's been doing in the mornings since Ichigo and Orihime and the others left. Whatever the reason, her exercises are her thing, something not fit for sharing with even the closest of her friends.

But she never thought before that someone would be able to tell just by being around her that she's been working on becoming not-weak. It scares her, makes her want to look in a mirror and make sure that the person staring back is really Arisawa Tatsuki and not some strange mutant. "No, I'm still me," she covers, a little gruffly. Karin looks at her discerningly, still trying to pick out what exactly she thinks is different, but gives up after a few moments when the answer doesn't come to her.

"Dad! You're needed!" she yells, and goes off to the kitchen to start making her breakfast.

Kurosaki Isshin sweeps into the exam room a few minutes later, his excessive energy and booming voice nearly bowling Tatsuki over. His exaggerated antics when he sees her self-patched wound make her roll her eyes, but she waits patiently while he looks it over and cleans it. He decides she needs a few stitches, and he numbs the skin while he sews it together, talking about absolutely nothing the entire time. When he's done, Tatsuki's shoulder feels sore but properly put together. She's about to grab her bag and head off to do some easy focusing exercises before class, but he stops her with a hand on her good shoulder.

"Take care, now," he says seriously. "Hollows can be pretty nasty."

She doesn't ask what 'hollows' are, doesn't really need to because her mind automatically conjures up images of the beast from the park this morning. An icy fear pools in her belly as she meets his eye: he knows her secret, though she has absolutely no idea how he figured it out. She's afraid he'll tell her parents, then tell her to stop this nonsense altogether. But his glance is anything but stern. Serious, certainly, but still warm and somehow approving.

"You don't have to worry about me," she replies, though the way she has to shrug her coat on awkwardly attests to the fact that maybe he _should_ worry about her. She leaves before he has a chance to change his mind.

Isshin watches the figure of one of his son's closest and oldest friends as it retreats down the street. She's alone today, but someday soon she won't be. At least, that's what he prays for.

"I can't help it; I worry about all you kids."


	3. Part II

Push Comes to Shove

**Part II**

They return exactly four days after the day Tatsuki stays home sick from school. That day she stayed home because she could barely bring herself to get out of bed, though by the next morning she was feeling perfectly fine. It confused her, and she still has a nagging suspicion that her illness wasn't entirely physical, but there was no one to ask at the time so she let things be. Then on the fourth day, she feels their presences return to the world, their familiar, friendly pressures weighing in on her mind. She nearly jumps out of her seat from the overwhelming sense of relief, but forces herself to act with more restraint. She asks to be excused to the bathroom and in seven steps is off school grounds completely, racing towards the spot where she can feel they are.

Tatsuki slows as she gets closer, apprehension building in her chest. It has been weeks, over a month in fact since she last saw any of them – they're bound to have changed during that time, just as she has. Will the reunion between them be awkward? Will her friends be so different that she's not important in their eyes anymore? These thoughts keep racing around her head nauseatingly the last few blocks. But as soon as she rounds the corner and her friends come into view, each walking as slowly as the other, those thoughts evaporate. She races the last few meters and launches herself at Orihime, enveloping her friend in a giant hug.

Usually, Tatsuki isn't one for hugs. Hugs are something feminine girls do; Tatsuki tends to just give an encouraging punch on the shoulder, if anything at all. But this time is special. The sense of relief she feels at actually seeing her friends alive in front of her is overwhelming and she just wants to touch them all to make sure they're really real and not some sort of figment of her overactive imagination. Orihime is solid, though, and Tatsuki figures that means the others are as well. The laugh that escapes her is mixed with a sob, and she holds her friend tightly as unbidden tears leak out the corners of her eyes.

"I'm so glad you're all alright," she says, and she can feel Orihime's tears trailing down her neck as her friend practically squeezes the life out of her, returning the hug.

The day was long in coming, but finally her friends are home.

* * *

Tatsuki doesn't go back to school the rest of the day, but instead follows the group as they go their separate ways. She doesn't ask about what happened in that place behind the sky and none of them volunteer anything either. There really is no need for words; their somber faces tell enough tales as it is, none of which are entirely happy. They all _feel_ different as well: their energies are bigger, stronger than before they left, but at the same time they're weary and in need of rest. A heavy silence hangs over them as they walk through the quiet residential streets, and to break it Tatsuki talks about what's been going on since they left: how much of a pain their teacher has been, what sorts of punishments she has created, which sports teams are doing well, even what the weather has been like. What she doesn't talk about is what she's been doing during their absence. As with Ichigo's dad and sister, she can't bring herself to let her friends in on her little secret. Besides, if any of them sense she's different from before, they don't say anything. 

Sado is the first to break off from the group, followed by Ishida. When they reach the parting corner, Tatsuki is about to follow Orihime back to her apartment when Ichigo asks if he could maybe talk to her. Orihime smiles and nods encouragingly, though Tatsuki can't help but notice the smile is a little sadder than usual – it doesn't quite reach her eyes and Tatsuki has a suspicion that it will be a while before she sees her friend truly smile again in that carefree manner. She goes on her way back to the apartment alone, and Tatsuki decides when she's done she'll make her friend a huge dinner and not leave her alone for the rest of the night so that she won't be lonely.

When Orihime is out of view, she turns back to Ichigo, only to find him watching the spot where Orihime disappeared around the corner, a serious expression on his face. Tatsuki doesn't know what happened while they were gone from this world, but she doesn't want to bring it up now. It may be selfish, but she's still so happy about their return that she doesn't want to mar it with talk of what happened. That is a story for another time.

She and Ichigo walk in silence for a block. Tatsuki watches her breath evaporate in little clouds on the chilled late autumn air and waits for her friend to speak his mind. "You aren't still mad at me, are you?" Ichigo asks eventually, rewarding Tatsuki's unusual bout of patience while kicking some loose pebbles on the sidewalk and resolutely not looking up. "I'm sorry I said those things to you before I left. Really sorry. I just… I didn't want you to worry -"

"Idiot. We've been friends for how many years? I'm not going to stop worrying just because you were a jerk. I've been worried every day since you and Orihime and everybody left."

He turns and looks at her at this, his expression incredulous. "You punched me through a window! I thought I did a good enough job." Ichigo pauses, his eyes returning to the spot on the street. "I'm sorry."

Ichigo looks so serious – almost depressed, in fact – that Tatsuki feels the need to make him smile again. He gets scary when he gets moody – she remembers that much from her childhood. "You're repeating yourself – you said that twice already. I'm not losing my memory, you know!" Her words succeed in producing a smile on his face, albeit a lopsided one: the one corner stays resolutely fixed in a frown position and, as with Orihime, Tatsuki realizes that it will be a while before her friend is able to smile wholly again.

An overwhelming urge to kick the asses of all the bastards who did these things to her friends sweeps over her, and she clenches her fist so tightly her nails seem to almost pierce the fabric of her mittens and delve into her palm. She realizes that her friends probably already kicked those bastards' collective asses, but that doesn't mean she feels the desire to do her own bit of damage any less.

"So… are we cool?" Ichigo asks, a little worried. He's looking at her in that apprehensive way that just makes her want to roll her eyes, smack him and say 'duh!'.

Tatsuki punches him in the shoulder lightly instead, just in case he has any injuries she doesn't know about. Sometimes she wonders how he can be so smart and yet so stupid at the same time. "Yeah, we're cool."

* * *

It's a long process getting her friends caught back up in everything. In school, they're so behind that it almost isn't funny even though watching the teacher jump through hoops to get them back up to speed can be entertaining at times. Sado, Ishida, Orihime, and Ichigo are all top-level students, though, and within weeks they're all mostly caught up on work and material. When Tatsuki sees the stacks and stacks of homework Orihime brings home every night while she's cooking dinner for her friend, she's almost glad that she was too weak to go off and fight – there's no way she'd ever be able to make up all that work, not even if she had one hundred years. 

Despite the fact that all her friends are all back, Tatsuki doesn't stop training. While they're all busy studying things that have long since slipped out of her memory since the first time the teacher taught the material, Tatsuki is working at becoming faster, stronger, more accurate with her kicks and putting more energy into her punches. Her grace and balance is increasing with each training session as well; she wouldn't be surprised if she could balance on the top of a fence given only a few more weeks of practice. Before and after school she darts around the clearing in the woods near the cemetery; to the casual observer, she is nothing but an indistinct smudge against the trees. But she doesn't get too many casual observers – the area she practices at is quiet and removed from most of the shrines and graves. Sometimes, that crazy bushy-haired man in the black robes comes by, looking more and more confused each time he does so. Tatsuki always makes sure to be far away when he comes by the clearing, just in case he decides to pull his sword on her; she's seen his hand twitch on the hilt a number of times and the prospect of fighting sharp steel with her bare hands is more than a little daunting.

One night at dinner, she asks Orihime why Ichigo sometimes dresses in that funny black outfit. Her friend replies that the black kimono and hakama are the uniform of a shinigami. Tatsuki has to hold in a laugh when she thinks about the confused man with the birds' nest for hair as a glorified god of death. Or Ichigo, for that matter. Though at least Ichigo has always had a great respect for the dead. Something tells her that of all her friends, the one who would make the best shinigami would be him.

Sometimes Tatsuki fights with hollows, vanquishing them before anyone else can arrive on the scene. She doesn't actively seek them out, but when she runs across one she doesn't hesitate to act. There have been a couple of close calls, once with the local shinigami, once with Ishida, and once with Ichigo himself. Tatsuki watched that last time from her perch atop a tree branch as her friend's giant sword gleamed unused in the moonlight and he looked around with no little confusion for the monster that was there only moments before.

With this increase in her abilities, Tatsuki figures that it's only a matter of time before her secret comes out. And how right she is. The night after a confused Ishida left the scene of her recent fight with a hollow, he corners her during break and asks just what the hell is going on. An unfamiliar flush creeps up her neck and spreads across her cheeks, and Tatsuki suddenly finds herself short on words. She mumbles something incomprehensible that might be 'I killed it'; at least, that's what Ishida hears it as, and his eyes widen behind his glasses in surprise. Tatsuki leaves to go talk with Orihime and the rest of her classmates before Ishida can ply her with more questions. She avoids him after that, just in case his curiosity hasn't been sated.

Orihime too notices something is different, though her approach is not quite as forceful but no less direct. In fact, she simply blurts out one night at dinner that she realizes Tatsuki-chan has been fighting hollows and that she hopes Tatsuki-chan always takes care not to get hurt. Tatsuki stares back dumbfounded for a moment at her friend before she allows herself a small grin.

"Couldn't keep letting you guys have all the fun, could I?" she jokes, but immediately wishes she had said nothing at all. Orihime is still smiling, but the expression is strained. She remembers that her friend hasn't had anything to do with hollows since she got back, no doubt because of something that happened during that time she still doesn't talk about with anyone. Tatsuki fidgets, suddenly even more uncomfortable than when Ishida cornered her and demanded an explanation. "Don't tell anyone, okay?" She says the first words that spring to the front of her mind. When Orihime looks a little surprised, Tatsuki elaborates. "I'm not really that good; it's kinda embarrassing, you know?"

Orihime nods, still obviously a bit confused. "Okay," she agrees. "But you know, you're a lot stronger than you think you are." Orihime then smiles, almost proudly, at her friend. "You never seemed weak to me."

* * *

One night, Tatsuki's luck seems to completely run out. 

She's practicing as usual, darting between her self-appointed targets until she is pleasantly exhausted and her breath comes out in white puffs against the clear almost-winter air when she senses a presence materialize near her. If the nauseating feelings its energy elicits weren't enough of a hint, a loud howl and a corresponding crash are a dead give away that a hollow is near by. And not just near by. When she turns around, she can see it at the edge of the trees, heading straight in her direction. The same panic that she felt the first time she encountered one of these monsters alone fills her stomach, weighing it down as if it were lead, but unlike before she doesn't let it paralyze her. Without a second thought, Tatsuki launches herself forward, straight at the oncoming hollow.

Her first kick, a direct blow to the thing's chest, does more damage to her than it does to the hollow; now that she's closer, she can see that its hide seems to be composed completely of plate-like armor. If it weren't for the manically grinning mask and the depthless black eyes, she probably could have mistaken it for some sort of dinosaur. Tatsuki lands in a crouch, the force of her rebound propelling her back across the ground a few meters before she stops completely. She has to jump to avoid a swing from its tail that could easily have taken off her head if she was just a hair slower in reacting, and she rolls immediately when she realizes its foot is about to pound her into the ground. She barely has time to catch a breath before she bounds off the side of a tree, propelling herself over the hollow's back and trying, in vain, to lash out at one of the weak spots of the joints of its armor.

The battle proceeds like that for longer than any fight Tatsuki has ever been in, and even though she's as strong as ever, she feels her energy flagging as the minutes drag on and her enemy doesn't seem to get any less deadly. Once, one of the spikes on the end of its tail catches her in the side, piercing her coat. She thinks it's strange she doesn't feel any pain, but when she places her hand over the slash it comes away covered in her own warm blood.

Suddenly, another presence fills her mind, one that is incredibly familiar and at the same time makes her panic a little: Ichigo. She still hasn't told him, though it's been over a month since he and the others returned, and unlike Ishida and Orihime he hasn't seemed to notice any change in her. She's not entirely sure how he will take the news, but if Ishida's and Orihime's reactions are anything to go by, it probably won't be received with a smile and congratulatory slap on the back.

The hollow takes advantage of her momentary distraction and catches her across the face with a blow from one of its stout legs. Tatsuki sees it coming only at the last moment, but even those few milliseconds are enough to turn a finishing blow into a little more than a painful glance. Blood trickles down hot and fast from the gash and she wipes it away before it can get in her eye.

They dance around for a little while more, and all the while Tatsuki is getting more and more tired. Her steps don't carry her quite as far, and she almost stumbles when she changes direction, rolling her ankle before she can regain her balance. But then she sees her opening: the correct angle to hit the right target. She'll only have one chance, though; she'll have to nail it, regardless of how she's feeling now. And so before she can have any second thoughts, she shoots off, streaming over the back of the angry hollow and up to a particularly thick branch of tree on its other side. Without stopping, she uses her hands to push off back in the direction of the hollow, leveling her feet at the base of its neck where there is a large gap in its armor. Tatsuki lets loose with all the energy she can summon, focusing every bit of it down into her feet. Before the hollow knows what's going on, her feet connect with the spot. There's a crack, a shudder, and the beast that has caused her so much pain this evening is nothing more than a wisp of glowing nothingness that is quickly swept away by a gust of wind.

Tatsuki falls to the ground, her heart racing inside her chest; it's beating so fast and so painfully that she's almost afraid it will break loose or maybe just stop working altogether. She's happy, though, and the feeling surges through her, racing through her veins faster than her blood. She can feel her blood clotting on her forehead and sticking awkwardly to her bangs, her side throbs, and her ankle aches a bit when she puts pressure on it in a certain way, but she laughs anyways.

The feeling dies quickly, however, as a shadow falls over her and she is overwhelmed by a truly furious burst of energy from the person currently standing over her head.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Ichigo shouts, his expression livid. He's wearing the black kimono and hakama again, and his sword is wrapped up and tied securely to his back. "You shouldn't be fighting something like that, Tatsuki!"

For a moment, Tatsuki is caught off guard and she stares up at Ichigo with blank features. But his last words spark something in her. It makes her absolutely furious, hearing her friend say that it's not her place to be fighting. After all they've been through, she thought he knew her well enough to realize she's not the type of person who can just sit back on her ass and watch others do the dirty work for her, especially if her own or someone else's safety is on the line. Despite the sharp pain in her side, she sits up and turns to face him, her face set in a stubbornly angry look. "Like hell I shouldn't!" she spits back, ignoring the insistent throbbing of her wounds. She stands up, wobbling slightly on her bad ankle, but her fury doesn't diminish. "Who are you to say I shouldn't fight if something like this attacks me?"

Ichigo raises his hands as if to gesture at the hollow, but when he remembers it's gone he just waves them angrily. "Shit, Tatsuki, you could have been _killed_! That thing was way out of your league!"

"Oh, but it's in yours?" she snorts, though she immediately regrets it because the action sends a sharp pain flashing up her side. It could just be the fact that the sun is setting, but the world looks a little dimmer than usual around the edges.

"Hell yes!" Ichigo shoots back. "That thing was small fry compared to other things I've faced!"

"Aren't you just a big shot then! Anyways, I killed it, didn't I? I don't think it was so much out of my league."

"You're an idiot!"

"And you're a chauvinistic pig!"

Tatsuki's words reverberate through the trees as silence descends on the pair. They both stand there, glaring daggers at each other even though neither can see well through the long shadows cast by the nearly-set sun. The atmosphere is charged with tension; it's a silent contest to see which turns away first and though Tatsuki is starting to feel each and every one of the places she got hit just previously, she refuses to waver.

Eventually, Ichigo takes a step forward. Tatsuki tries to step forward, rising to the challenge, but her balance falters as she steps wrongly on her foot and her whole leg crumbles involuntarily beneath her. Before she hits the ground, she feels his arms loop beneath her own and haul her up, pulling her close to his chest.

"What do you think you're doing?!" she shrieks as he moves one arm behind her knees so that she is cradled next to his chest. She wants to struggle, but it hurts too much and Ichigo's grip is like an iron vice.

"Shut up," he responds gruffly, not sounding any happier about the arrangement than Tatsuki feels. "It's too far to walk. My dad'll fix you up."

Neither speaks on the journey back to the clinic, and Tatsuki wishes wholeheartedly that it wasn't too far of a walk to make with her injuries because a little more pain would be infinitely preferable to being forced to cling to the one person with whom she is most furious at the moment. As it is, the journey only takes a few minutes, as Ichigo is apparently quite proficient at jumping from building top to building top even with her added weight in his arms. He drops her off at the clinic's door before entering the house through his bedroom window one floor up. When next she sees him, she has five more stitches in her side, butterfly sutchers above her left eyebrow, and her ankle is wrapped so tightly in bandages she's fairly certain circulation will be completely cut off at some point in the near future. Ichigo, on the other hand, is back in his normal clothes, but the scowl from before remains etched on his features. He doesn't say anything as she limps slightly out the front door, and she doesn't look back as she closes the door just a little harder than necessary behind her.

* * *

Tatsuki's fairly sure she wouldn't be quite so mad at Ichigo if she didn't have so much time to sit around and think about what he said to her nearly a week ago. However, with her stitches and bum ankle, she can't participate at practice, and she holds off on her private exercises for fear of aggravating her injuries. With two of her main distractions unavailable to her, all Tatsuki has to do in her free time is schoolwork (which, admittedly, there is a lot of) and thinking. And each time Ichigo's words play over in her head, the urge to punch the guy in the face grows a little stronger. 

If their friends realize there's something going on between the two of them (and really, they'd have to be blind, deaf, and living in a cave _not_ to), they all wisely abstain from involvement in the feud. Even Keigo, whose sense of self-preservation has never exactly been strong, says nothing and tends to be as far away as possible whenever Tatsuki and Ichigo are forced to be in the same room as each other.

It takes nearly another week before she snaps; the tension has become so pervasive that her focus is slipping both during her incredibly limited training time in the dojo and her personal training sessions. And that annoys her almost as much as Ichigo does. So on Friday after classes are dismissed and they're all walking home, Tatsuki does the one thing that has always been easy for her to do: she punches her friend hard across the face when he doesn't expect it. Ichigo is probably the only person she doesn't have any qualms about wailing on, most likely because she's been beating him up in some fashion or another for as long as she's been able to correctly write her name.

Ichigo falls flat on his ass, hand clutching his jaw as he lets loose with a string of curses strong enough to strip paint off a wall. It takes a few moments for it to register in his mind who just punched him, but when he sees Tatsuki glaring at him with just as much fury behind her gaze as that night a few weeks ago, his face hardens. It looks like he's going to walk away, but she doesn't give him a chance, her next blow catching him on the shoulder and sending him stumbling back to the ground. When he turns to face her this time, it's with flashing eyes and a frown accentuated by the cut on his lip from her first punch. When Tatsuki goes in for the third time, he's ready, and blocks her punch easily. Her kick, however, catches him off-guard.

She draws him further into the battle, forcing him to fight back and he does, to an extent. He was never great at hand to hand combat, and the years haven't changed that. But he's fast – faster than Tatsuki, even when she starts to tap into that internal power. He blocks all her serious shots as if he can see them coming from a mile away. This only serves to fuel Tatsuki's frustration more, and she lashes out until her breathing gets ragged and the place where her stitches were until just recently starts to ache.

And still Ichigo has barely broken a sweat.

"Why…" she grunts as she lashes out desperately once more. He blocks it as usual but doesn't attempt to return the blow. Instead, he grabs her arms and pins them both securely to her side. Tatsuki struggles, but she knows she's too tired to break free this time. "Why are you such a bastard?!" she cries.

Ichigo looks back at her seriously, the blood from the few cuts she managed to inflict trickling slowly down his chin and temple. "Why are you so damn irresponsible?!" he counters. "You could have been killed by that thing, Tatsuki!"

"I KNOW!" she shouts, her temper so frayed it feels like it'll take a miracle to ever put it back together again. "You said that already! It's not like I went out looking for that fight. It came to me, for your information. Besides, you think I don't know what I'm getting myself into?"

His grip on her arms tightens painfully. "That's it! You don't! You don't know anything about what you're getting involved in by fighting hollows!" His angry words pass from his mouths in white puffs of vapor, drifting off into the winter sky. A few ominous drops of cold rain fall around them, heralding a shower to come, but neither pay them any heed.

"I'm sick of being the weak one, Ichigo. I'm sick of you and Orihime always having to save me! So I did something about it. And I'm not sorry, not one bit!" Tatsuki's world is blurring at the edges, and she wishes Ichigo would let go of her arms so she could wipe the excess moisture from the corners of her eyes. He keeps his hold on her, though, and the tears born of months of frustration, guilt, worry, and angry build up in the corners and spill out against her will. A few more raindrops fall, large and cold, running down her hair and neck and sending chills down her spine.

Ichigo's eyes soften as he relaxes his grip slightly on his friend's arms and he's quiet for a moment. "I just…" he starts finally, looking down at his feet, but stops almost immediately. "I… I didn't want you to get hurt. First Rukia, then Orihime… if anything happened to you because of me dragging everyone into this crazy mess…" he trails off there. He doesn't need to finish; Tatsuki has known him long enough to know he'd probably drive himself insane with the guilt.

"I'm not a child, you know," she reminds him, breaking the silence. The rain is starting to fall steadily now, matting her hair against her head so that her bangs drip water into her eyes. "You can't keep me locked up or something."

"I know." The rain is starting to make his skin pale and his lips blue, and Tatsuki can only guess that she's starting to look similar, if her chattering teeth are anything to go by.

"And you can't always be telling me what I can and can't do – I'm not completely incompetent, you know."

"I know," he answers, letting go of her arms. "We should get inside," he adds, wiping rain from his eyes. "The clinic is closer."

They walk together in silence for a few blocks, already too soaked to worry about rushing home in order to stay dry. It's a companionable silence, though, and not at all hostile. Tatsuki looks over at her friend after a while, watching the rain run down his hair and coat. "You're still a bastard," she says bluntly.

Ichigo grins crookedly in response. "Yeah, I know."

* * *

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has left reviews - it's so encouraging, especially since this is my first excursion into writing for this fandom. Your comments all mean a lot to me. There's going to be one last part of this story, so stick around! 


	4. Epilogue

Push Comes to Shove

**- Epilogue -**

Karin slams the door shut behind her, chest heaving from running home. She spent the entire trip back cursing herself for not remembering to bring an umbrella along to the store – it's only a short trip, after all, and it didn't look like it would rain when she left – and now she's cold and wet, two things she absolutely hates, especially in conjunction with one another. She grumbles as her hair drips water onto the floor, and her shoes squelch a bit as she takes them off. The soles so waterlogged it will probably take over a day to get them completely dry. That's when she notices it: an extra pair of shoes. Obviously a girl's, based on the size. But who's shoes…?

"Yuzu, who's the guest?" she asks plainly when she finds her sister sitting at the table working on homework. Karin grabs a towel from the kitchen and starts to dry her hair off. A hot bath would feel really good right about now…

Her sister doesn't even bother to glance up from her homework, just keeps working the math equations as she answers. "Oh, it's just Tatsuki-chan. She came home with Ichigo a little while ago. They're up in his room." She suddenly slams her pencil down, though, making Karin jump. She stares back at her sister, who is looking uncharacteristically manic at the moment.

"Yuzu… are you alright…?"

"Honestly, though! Ichi-nii is never going to get a girlfriend if he keeps acting like this and only inviting tomboys over! It's just so frustrating!"

Karin wonders just who it's frustrating for, because from the looks of things her brother seems to be doing just fine. So he can be a little moody and overprotective at times, and the whole giant sword-wielding, world-saving alter ego deal would undoubtedly put him at a disadvantage on the dating scene if he ever entered it in the first place (there's baggage and then there's _that_), but he seems to be a happy, healthy teenage male. Her sister, on the other hand, seems to have an unhealthy determination to become an aunt sooner rather than later. Karin wonders, not for the first time, how she can possibly be related to someone like Yuzu.

Her musings are interrupted by a rather loud thump as something crashes to the floor in the room above them. Karin and Yuzu both look up, confused and a tiny bit apprehensive: the room above the kitchen is Ichigo's room. They glance at each other before looking at the ceiling once again. There's a little shuffling and then nothing.

"It's… just Tatsuki-chan up there," Karin mutters, desperately reigning in her imagination. "Just Tatsuki-chan."

"Uh huh," agrees Yuzu. From the distant yet curious look in her eyes, however, Karin can tell her sister isn't making nearly the same effort as herself. "Just Tatsuki-chan…"

* * *

A/N: I couldn't help but throw in this last bit - the beginning of Chapter 197 of the manga really made the wheels of the devious part of my brain start turning. Anyways, thank you all so very much for reading and providing feedback. This was a blast to write but all good things come to and end, I guess. Thanks again and with any luck I'll be back soon!  



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